Whole nuclear plant must be decommisioned: Japan PM Kan

TOKYO - Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said yesterday that the entire Fukushima nuclear plant must be decommissioned, Kyodo News reported. Mr Kan made the remarks during a meeting with the Japanese Communist Party chief Kazuo Shii. The announcement came a day after Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said it would scrap reactors 1 to 4 while reactors 5 and 6 - which are in a stable cold shutdown - could be retained. Damaged reactors at the crippled Dai-Ichi nuclear plant may take three decades to decommission and cost Tepco more than ¥1 trillion (S$15.2 billion), engineers and analysts said. Japan also faced growing pressure to expand a 20-km evacuation zone around the plant where radiation hit 4,385 times legal limits in nearby sea - the highest recorded so far during the crisis. Consistently high levels of radiation found in the sea near the complex could mean radiat...